Marcel-li Antunez at Mercat de les Flors Theater - Barcelona

In 1979, when he was 21, Marcel-li Antunez helped found La Fura dels Baus, a Barcelona-based theater group characterized by its raucous mixture of nudity, medieval-era theatrics and stunts, and high-tech stage settings. Antunez left the group in 1989, but his subsequent work--graffiti, experimental music and objects--retained the will to shock and amuse.

At Mercat de les Flors, Antunez presented three multimedia performances: Epizoo, Afasia and his most complex piece to date, Pol In Epizoo (1994), the stocky, bald-headed artist appeared nude, except for a black thong, a beanielike helmet and a shiny metal apparatus fitted to his body that incorporated orthopedic devices, pneumatic pumps and plastic tubes. Viewers were encouraged to manipulate Antunez's body using a computer set up on one end of the small stage. On the monitor, there were a dozen buffoonish configurations of him to select from. Depending on the model chosen, gizmos flapped the artist's ears back and forth, pulled his nostrils upward, stretched the corners of his mouth open wide and/or lifted his pectoral muscles and buttocks. At the same time, stage lights blinked on and off and constantly morphing images of Antunez flashed on the screen behind him. For the grand finale, flames shot out of his helmet. Epizoo is no doubt painful for the artist (who's endured it over 50 times), but its humorous presentation somehow takes your mind off that.

Afasia (1998), which won the best video art prize at Montreal's 1999 Festival of New Cinema and Media, is loosely based on Homer's epic, The Odyssey. Antunez was rigged up in a contraption of straps and wires on his arms, legs and torso, and acted as master of ceremonies for the video projections depicting his "voyage." Four elaborate musical robots were brought to life when the artist pointed his metal-encased index finger at them; they made ear-splitting sounds approximating drums, an electric guitar, an organ and a synthesizer. The projections feature animated images of Antunez on a bed sailing across fantasy landscapes. These scenes are interspersed with bizarre occurrences such as actors smearing bloody animal guts on each other, a one-eyed monster threatening to eat people trapped in a cave, and individuals scarfing down watermelons and slobbering the juice over the well-oiled body of a prone, writhing woman. Antunez later covers the same woman with chocolate sauce, then "spray painted"--with canned whipped cream--a skeleton's outline on top. In the end, Antunez returns to his house in the country. He hugs his little boy as his adoring, apron-clad wife looks on from the doorway.

In Pol (2002), Antunez teamed with Piero Steiner, a talented Italian actor and singer, who played Pol, an endearing little rabbit/man who has no teeth. Resigned to gumming down a certain brand of tinned sausages, he fans madly in love with the girl on the can's label. Much of the time, the story of Pol unfolded on the large screen that served as a backdrop; the actors appeared onstage intermittently. Like Antunez, Steiner wore a metallic device made of straps, belts, wires and tubes (along with rabbit ears) which both actors used to make prerecorded, computer-generated imagery appear on a three-part screen; they controlled taxidermic animals-cure-robots that roll, hop, shoot smoke and make absurd noises. Antunez played the girl's evil father, Cervosatan, who taunts Pol mercilessly. Both on the screen (in filmed images) and on the stage, the characters snarl and confront each other. But Pol prevails and with each successful showdown, he smiles (on screen) and shows that he has sprouted more teeth. Finally, he kills Cervosatan and gets the girl.

In Pol, Antunez has found a way to channel his prodigious, hallucinogenic imagination into a cohesive story line, to optimum results.

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